Hotel California
by mmmmmm00
Summary: Vicious was very busy between 2069 and 2071, climbing his way up the syndicate over the corpses of friends and enemies. Rated because Vicious is not a nice man.


**Hotel California**

Vicious was very busy between 2069 and 2071, climbing his way up the syndicate over the corpses of friends and enemies.

 **Disclaimer** for this chapter ad infinitum: If I owned Cowboy Bebop I wouldn't change a thing. I don't, but I doubt you actually care anyway. You're just here to see something clever.

* * *

 **Prologue:** **Before Drifting Into the Abyss**

* * *

Vicious would later have some trouble with finer details of the day Spike 'died' and Julia disappeared. He remembered that it had been raining.

It hadn't taken him very long after to determine that Spike was not dead after all: money changed hands behind the Foreign Office building in Olympus, and Vicious had his answer. If that had failed, if Spike had had a false passport, then there were other avenues. Most telling, there had been no body at the scene or dredged out of a canal.

According to border crossing records, Spike Spiegel left the planet a matter of weeks after evaporating off the streets of Mars on an old trawler flagged out of Ganymede. Vicious did spend some time wondering why Mao was apparently too stupid to figure this out; he eventually decided that Mao did not _really_ want to know. Not if there was the possibility that Spike was really dead, or...perhaps it was that if he were alive, and the wrong person found out, his hand might be forced? The cardinal law in the syndicate was that you left only in a body bag. Had Mao called off the hunt after one pass in case the next one succeeded?

Spike had lived, but Mao would never learn it from Vicious. Not even if he asked nicely and said please ( _ha_ _!_ ). If Vicious had to give a point at which he began to take a really close look at his mentor and to question at the order itself, he would name that one, because if there was one thing Vicious could not stand, it was a hypocrite.

How could they not have known? If you make your bed, you've got to lie in it.

" _So. You were going to betray me? Did you_ really _think you could just leave?"_

" _Vicious..."_

" _Keep dreaming, Julia. It's never going to happen."_ He'd warned Spike to be careful when he was with her. Dreaming would not make the world other than what it was, or change what you had already done. Dreaming put stupid ideas into your head, but the waking world would always catch up, with all its consequences.

She'd looked up at him—why? What could she hope to draw out? There had been a time when her eyes and her smile had drawn out of him an uncharacteristic sympathy, but she had betrayed him. Spike had betrayed him. They deserved nothing.

" _Are you gonna kill him?"_

Such guileless concern, and not for herself; how touching. It was still hard to say exactly what he had felt, looking into Julia's worried, beautiful face. When he found out abut the affair, and more—that they planned to cut and run, he had been all but running over with rage, the bitter sting of betrayal, spite, wounded pride—all of them together were present, boiling furiously beneath the surface of his skin, too much to express without screaming like he had gone mad. In Julia's apartment he felt numb, as though a nuclear blast had gone off and left in its catastrophic wake an absolute, significant stillness.

An idea struck him at the moment she asked, one that was as cruel as it was appealing, and he set the gun down.

" _I won't. You're going to do it for me_ _._ _"_ He'd smiled at her. _"_ _Either you kill_ _him_ _, or_ _else_ _both of you die._ _Those are your only options._ _"_

And then of course she hadn't killed him, she had vanished. Barely a day had passed between his threat and their appointed rendezvous, but by then the need for immediate redress had dimmed to the point that he wasn't interested in chasing them around the solar system. They were apart, and that was punishment enough—for now. There were worse things to do to someone than kill them.

Vicious had more immediate and practical needs to take care of.

That day ended, and for all he told himself that no great shattering event would mark the date, he didn't really believe it until the sun shone brightly the next morning.

* * *

Vicious is a weird dude. He's also a pain in the ass to write. And this is a terribly short prologue, so, I'm sorry.

So, one of the overarching themes in Cowboy Bebop is dealing with the past. Or, y'know, not dealing with it at least in any sort of constructive sense. As this story is told from the perspective of the main narrative's villain, it may make **familiar characters sound unfamiliar**.

This fic is based on a fundamental premise: Vicious is sane. And on a lesser premise: there are two sides to every argument. He's is not the sort of person I would want to meet even in broad daylight in a very public area, but ultimately, I just can't imagine that he could be unendurable in every circumstance and still be able to gain enough of a following to pull off a coup. Fear, a bird, and a sweet sword only get you so far.

Anyway, I might not have accomplished anything so much as a giant pile of pretentious shit and taken a few liberties while I was at it, so please give me your constructive criticism! I mean to take this story, with a few asides, straight through to the final confrontation in the last episode. There will, necessarily, be OCs. If that's not your cup of tea, please don't read.

Ps., every now and then I get somebody up in here complaining that swearing is 'unprofessional.' First of all, this is fanfiction, not Scholastic books for kids or whatever. And I'm not trying to win a Pulitzer. Second of all, and more importantly, I shit on sanctimony. Get used to it or turn on that filter thing if they still have it. I'm writing about gangsters, not nuns.

Pps., the character I hate is...nobody. A grand total of nobody. Granted, of the main cast, the only one I think I might actually be okay having a beer with is Jet without being terrified for my neck or my wallet, but that doesn't mean I hate anybody.

Ppps., it always bothered me that Spike didn't even bother changing his name to hide from a supposedly powerful crime syndicate. Seriously though, it's the kind of shit that people need witness protection for in real life...then again, maybe Spike isn't really his name? Maybe it's Maurice? (And if you don't get that joke, knock off that One Direction shit or whatever the kids are listening to these days and go listen to some Steve Miller Band.)

Pppps., I'll shut up now.


End file.
